State of Unease: The Return of the X Files

By Binoy Kampmark | Global Research

They are returning, Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully looking somewhat well preserved, and a greyish David Duchovny as Fox Mulder.  The FBI duo, dynamic or otherwise, mining the consciousness of conspiranoia, tapping into the perennial scepticism about official accounts, standard narratives, the truth dictated as gospel from the powers that be. They were always meant to know better, even if more questions than answers were found.

Chris Carter was eager to draw from the well of X-File mania to give the series a new six-episode run.  But the supplementary soil, in terms of events, has been fertile.  “We deal with fear in a lot of different ways… The fact that we’re being spied on and don’t seem to be raising any protest is a frightening prospect for me.”  Carter’s points of reference? WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, and whistleblower Edward Snowden.[1]

Carter is by no means the only one to share this view.  According to Evan Valentine, “Honestly, our present society and time is probably a much better fit for the X-Files than it was during the era when it first debuted.”  Why? “Questioning authority has become part of the course,” a point the creators took to heart in resurrecting Mulder and Scully.[2]

The America of the 1990s from which the X-Files issued forth was, tritely put, another country.  But it did have its weekly digest of tabloid alien abductions, unexplained sightings, and millenarian terrors.  Given the absence of a politicised global Yeti or Big Foot in the form of the Soviet Union, people just had to make do with other backyard, paranormal findings.

Even as the series limped into oblivion in 2002, the arsenals of delusion were being readied for their catastrophic release in 2003.  Call them aliens, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists – everyone had to have something to believe, their conspiracy to treasure.  The events of September 11, 2001 were already sowing seeds of suspicion; the invasion of Iraq on specious, concocted grounds (the WMD conspiracy) added to the ledger of speculations.  The tree of conspiracy began to flower; there were false flags everywhere.  The “truthers” had arrived in numbers.

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